Wednesday, May 28, 2008
In a previous post I complained about the enormous amount of time wasted at the typical knowledge worker's job, and some ways things could be improved. It turns out, unbelievably, that I was not the first one to think of this! Best Buy has already implemented what sounds like a much better system called "Results Oriented Work Environment (ROWE)" which is described here. Now if only they could do something about being located in Minnesota, it might actually be a good place to work.
But back to my place of employment. Off the top of my head, I can think of two problems applying the ROWE technique here. First, it would require that my boss had an idea of what I was working on, as opposed to our current arrangement which was lifted from the policy on gays in the military.
Second, if we cut out wasted time, we would only be working about 45 minutes a day, and would no longer be able to justify running around screaming about how short-staffed and starved for resources we are. It would sound silly.
Also, of possible interest to the reader of this blog, I would no longer have to spend all day killing time and would stop posting.
[As a side note, this post took about 45 minutes to write, even though it kinda sucks. I got interrupted three times during its composition. Once to see if I wanted to get coffee (I did), once from someone who was just taking a walk to stretch, and once when a group congregated near me to talk loudly about someone's upcoming vacation. I would've also had 5 smaller interruptions, if I hadn't turned off Microsoft Outlook notifications.]
But back to my place of employment. Off the top of my head, I can think of two problems applying the ROWE technique here. First, it would require that my boss had an idea of what I was working on, as opposed to our current arrangement which was lifted from the policy on gays in the military.
Second, if we cut out wasted time, we would only be working about 45 minutes a day, and would no longer be able to justify running around screaming about how short-staffed and starved for resources we are. It would sound silly.
Also, of possible interest to the reader of this blog, I would no longer have to spend all day killing time and would stop posting.
[As a side note, this post took about 45 minutes to write, even though it kinda sucks. I got interrupted three times during its composition. Once to see if I wanted to get coffee (I did), once from someone who was just taking a walk to stretch, and once when a group congregated near me to talk loudly about someone's upcoming vacation. I would've also had 5 smaller interruptions, if I hadn't turned off Microsoft Outlook notifications.]
